The headline is clickbait.
The proposition is real, with the tripling of U.S. natural gas prices the use of ammonia as the nitrogen carrier has become borderline uneconomic, meaning farmers won't be able to recover the input costs when they sell crops meaning they won't fertilize as much meaning lower - maybe much lower - yield per acre meaning, less food, meaning hunger and maybe starvation.
But today's post is about another of the elements required for plant growth, potassium.
From the Financial Times' natural resources editor Neil Hume, who was apparently so xcited about the news and typing so fast he transposed the 'i' and the 'e' in the company's name, it's Nutrien, symbol NTR, and they are the world's largest producer of potassium in the form of potash.
More potash supply on the way. From Nutrein's investor day. pic.twitter.com/ZL3fXX5IDx
— Neil Hume (@humenm) June 10, 2022
We'll have more on nitrogen this summer but if in the meantime you would like to read up on our second favorite element we have hundreds of prior posts beginning with:
"Turning air into bread"
Since I have been, and will be, going on about ammonia as a carrier for hydrogen,
NH3 - ammonia - three hydrogens attached to a nitrogen:
Credit: This Condensed Life
about fertilizer and guano, about Yara and Norsk Hydro and Birkeland and explosives, I thought it time to add another post to our nitrogen mini-library.
From the cheerfully optimistic The Roots of Progress:....
and continuing for page after page of links:
